SmugKitZine Tied for the best movie I have ever seen

Taraparain Tells a fascinating and unsettling true story, and does so well, without pretending to have all the answers.

Humaira Grant It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

Neive Bellamy Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

marcotheconqueror The very first word to describe this movie would be 'weird', but I actually really enjoyed this movie. I thought it's humor and kind of wacky, fictional vision was very appealing and a fresh, funny take on a classic story. I thought John Leguizamo was awesome in this, the way he spoke and acted was so cool.

sergicaballeroalsina A movie in which this text is faithfully interpreted should be a pretty movie even with eyes closed. We should agree that theoretically there is no better dramatic text than any classic from the pen of Shakespeare. From this I deduce that at least half of the artistic purpose of the film is satisfactorily resolved. We could discuss its aesthetics although I think that has to do with personal taste. A wannabe contemporary drama through the post-modern setting of the rave parties landscapes and an aesthetic halfway between cyber-punk and techno of the second half of the 90s that refers to other movies of the decade. In this way it achieves the task of transferring such an important text to those days. I think that Baz Luhrmann could not have thought of a better way to recreate a paradigmatically baroque play that also containes his so characteristic aesthetic universe. The simplicity or complexity of the characters can not be discussed either; Only the performances can be questioned, but they develop favorably through the remarkable work of the actors. Be careful because if you are willing to contemplate the most famous love story in the world in a truly unprecedented environment, this can become one of your favorite dramas.

scullyuk-54662 The main problems with this movie is the directors style, which is generally a cringe worthy mix of something you would expect to find on MTV combined with a YouTube video where the editor had just discovered all of the effects. Just in the beginning scene alone, there's a scary number of consistent annoying zooms into close ups and the scene consistently interchanging between normal and slow motion. Instead of helping to progress the story, as any good film should, it instead gets in the way of the story, feeling as if the director was more worried about showing of his previously mentioned style and trying to be noticed instead of creating a good film adaptation of Shakespeare's work.The film then plummets to an even more more intolerable level as it reaches its first talking scene. Not only does the pacing of the film majorly slow but you realise that all the dialogue is written in old English. This makes some of the performances seem very flat because it is as if the actors don't actually know what they are talking about. Overall, this film isn't worried about its story but instead, it is constantly distracting you from it with the director trying to say "Look at me and my style". This makes the film very hard to sit through due to its cringe worthy style, weak performances and uneven pacing.

a_chinn Wildly fun adaptation of William Shakespeare's play by writer/director Baz Luhrmann. Changing the setting of Shakespeare's plays for film adaptations isn't a new thing. It had previously been done as musicals, westerns, samurai films, gangster pictures, indie dramas about street hustlers, teen comedies, teen dramas, and so on and so forth, but none of those films brought the exuberance and audacity as this film. Set in a Venice Beach-like setting between two feuding wealthy business family empires, Brian Dennehy as Ted Montague and Paul Sorvino as Fulgencio Capulet, with their star cross lover children, Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes, in roles that really put their stars on the Hollywood map, at the center of the drama. The film faithfully follows the source material's story and all of the dialogue is taken straight from the play, but the dialogue is amazingly accessible and understandable from the actors speaking the lines in a very naturalistic manner. Laurence Olivier was actually criticized in his day for delivering lines in too naturalistic of a manner and not in the traditional more sing-song of manner, which Kenneth Branagh took even further, but this film puts that on a whole new level. Actors here are gangsters, street punks, and thugs and deliver their lines as such, but their words are accessible in a way I'd never seen before that retained Shakespeare's original words. In some ways, it's kind of like Martin Scorsese's "The Last Temptation of Christ" where most all of the characters spoke as if they were off the mean streets of Brooklyn. In both cases it served to connect the characters and stories to modern audiences and crate less of a distance between the two. The film also drips of 1990s cool, with a very hip soundtrack and many fashions of the day (with a hint of Elizabethan). The film features a strong cast that also includes Harold Perrineau, Pete Postlethwaite, Paul Rudd, Vondie Curtis- Hall, M. Emmet Walsh, Jamie Kennedy, and a memorable Vincent Laresca. But the real start is Bad Luhrmann, who's combination of visuals, sound, and editing created a film so full of energy and audacity that it stands apart from any other Shakespearian film adaptation and is something truly unique. My only complaint about the film is that the modernization of the story also makes Romeo and Juliet's drama and romance seem overly trite and self important in a way that I found annoying. To the teens and teen audiences, I'm sure their love and feelings are very real and serious and worthy of live & death, but at the same time these are kids and they really shouldn't be taking themselves all that seriously. Leo and Clair might as well be the self important teens from "13 Reasons Why" for how overly serious they take themselves. Still, I don't think middle age men were Luhrmann's target audience here (i.e. me), so my criticism is probably not valid (i.e. I'm just being a cranky old man). Still, this is a wonderfully original film that demands multiple viewings.